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3-km high ash explosion recorded in Mayon

The Philippines’ most active volcano oozed lava and shot up plumes of ash, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes and face the possibility of a bleak Christmas in a shelter.

State volcanologists raised the alert level on the cone-shaped, 2,460-metre Mayon volcano to two steps below a major eruption after ash explosions late Monday. Dark orange lava fragments glowed in the dark as they trickled down the mountain slope overnight.

Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said the activity could get worse in coming days.

“It’s already erupting,” Mr. Solidum told The Associated Press.

More than 20,000 people were moved to safety by nightfall Tuesday, said Governor Joey Salceda of Albay province, where Mayon is located about 340 kilometres southeast of Manila.

The current activity of the volcano is similar to the initial phases of previous eruptions in 2000, 2001 and 2006, he said.
He said there was a high danger that cascading lava could trigger a pyroclastic flow — superheated gas and volcanic debris racing down the slopes at very high speed, vaporizing everything in its path.
Salceda said the police and military will block 12 gateways to 56 villages within the danger zone to enforce the round-the-clock curfew on the area, which will remain until scientists lower the volcano alert by one level.
Salceda also said the provincial government has borrowed a helicopter that could fly “nightly patrols” around the volcano.
The evacuees, mostly poor farmers and laborers, will spend Christmas at evacuation centers.
At the Bagumbayan Central School in Legazpi, the provincial capital, Guilly Anonuevo, a 75-year-old veteran of five evacuations, will spend Christmas for the first time in an evacuation center.
“We do not know where we will get our Christmas dinner. We have no money,” she said. “It’s all right to be sad as long as we are safe from Mayon’s eruption